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Business success is determined by one key concept. When you understand and use it, you will be able to face and overcome challenges and continually improve, in both your business and personal life. This simple concept is called above and below the line.

Picture an imaginary horizontal line. Above the line is a way of living in which you take ownership, accountability and responsibility for everything in your life. In business this may be the amount of money in your bank account, the type of clients you are working with, or the quality of your relationships. Up here you’ll find solutions and results. You’ll have the mentality of a successful victor over your circumstances.

Living below the line is using blame, excuses and denial to avoid responsibility for improving your life. Here you play the victim, come up with reasons you don’t have what you want, and focus on problems.

Playing above the line is a decision

It’s human nature to go below the line daily. Science shows that we have a negativity bias – an inbuilt protection mechanism to look for threats and weaknesses over opportunities, to ensure our survival. The challenge arises when we live below the line on a regular or permanent basis.

There are many things we can’t control in life. To live above the line, we must focus only on what we can control and influence. We can’t control Australia’s economy, but we can choose our financial decisions on a daily basis. We can’t determine which political party will get into office, but we can have our say by voting and contributing positively to politicial discussion.

No matter what life throws at us, we can always choose our thoughts, attitudes and behaviour. It’s important that we don’t ignore problems and challenges, as they don’t usually go away on their own. Dealing with them when they first appear is key.

It’s also vital to deal with stress by venting when needed. If we find it hard to be above the line in our office, we give each other a 3-minute time limit. We have fun and blame everyone, make every possible excuse, and deny any responsibility for our situation! Then we ask, “now what’s the outcome we want, and what are we going to do to get it?”.

(Thanks to Justin Maybury, team member of a great business we work with, for creating this image of his progress one day trying to stay above the line. We call it “One foot over!”)

How do you live above the line to ensure business success?

When things are not how you want them to be, focus on the solution, not the problem.

Instead of complaining that there’s not enough money to pay the BAS, ask “how do I find the money to pay what’s due, then ensure there is enough in time for each future instalment?”

Rather than blaming the economy or your competitors for a lack of leads, ask “who are the clients I want, and where can I find them? What can I offer that’s valuable to them?”

Replace “why is this employee continually needing supervision?” with “how can I be a better manager?”

Success guru Tony Robbins says the quality of your life is determined by the quality of the questions you ask. When you make a mistake, don’t ask “why does this always happen to me?” but “how can I ensure I get the result I want next time?”

We all have challenges in life. Leadership and personal development expert Brian Tracy describes business as: Problem – problem – problem – problem – CRISIS! Imagine business challenges as waves on the ocean (which means every seventh one is likely to be a dumper…). You can choose to get out of the water, or learn to surf.

The secret to life and business success is to focus on solutions rather than problems.

If you’re in business, you probably want more profit than you’re currently getting. And the most effective way to do that is to increase your business marketing to get more customers, right?

Not necessarily!

Lead generation will definitely result in more enquiries, but doesn’t guarantee more profit. In fact, having more enquiries may just make your business fail faster.

If you would like more profit from your business in 2018, here are 5 essential things to do before you spend time, effort and money on business marketing ….

Reduce overheads and expenditure

While we do want to focus on the top line, it’s important first to ensure your business isn’t wasting money on unnecessary expenses. Check your bills for accuracy, and shop around for better deals for services such as electricity and phones. Reduce staff overtime, or consider using a virtual assistant for certain tasks. Look at your current marketing cost and stop spending money on ads that don’t work.

Increase efficiency

A profitable business needs solid systems and efficient staff. When things aren’t done to specification, on time, and to budget, time and money is lost to re-work, dissatisfied customers, and lost opportunity. Start by measuring the effectiveness of all that you’re currently doing. Give team members KPIs and targets; implement a quality control system; focus on employee training; and automate as much as possible.

Invite your previous customers to come back again, or use you more frequently

When customers feel important and valued to your business they are more likely to use your product or service again. Great customer service encourages a repeat customer, and a direct invitation makes it even more likely they’ll be back. Give a voucher for a return visit; a two-for-one deal for their next purchase; or offer a service contract. Introduce a frequent buyers’ program, or sell consumables to go with their original purchase.

Encourage your customers to spend more with you

We call this wallet share rather than market share. Your current customers may be buying one product or service from your business, but going elsewhere for other things they need (not realising they could also get it from you). Let your customers know your entire range of products and services; offer incentives for larger purchases; allow payment terms; and set an average dollar sale goal for your team.

Convert more of your existing leads into sales

When business owners tell us they need to focus on marketing, we often find that they have plenty of enquiries coming in, they just aren’t converting all their leads into sales.

Start to measure all your leads and how many of these turn into customers. You may be surprised at the number of opportunities you’re losing.

If you’re a service business, something as simple as appointment reminders or touching base before your first meeting will help. Assist your frontline staff and sales team by having scripts and a sales process; ensure every team member can communicate the benefits of using your products and services to prospective customers; and consider offering an incentive for first-time buyers.

As you can see, a profitable business requires more than just a steady stream of leads. We can help you maximise the value of each lead and customer, and have a glass overflowing, not a leaking bucket!

Although marketing is often the first thing business owners want to focus on to increase profit, we need to ensure the business is operating efficiently and effectively first.

The last thing you want to do is ramp up your marketing to introduce new customers to a bad experience, or speed up the decline of a business that’s not profitable.

Now it’s time for business marketing …

When you’ve minimised your expenses; and maximised your lead conversion, frequency of customers using you, amount they spend each time, and your efficiency; it’s time to generate new leads.

Start small and inexpensive. A combination of on-line and in-person marketing is ideal. Effective SEO and social media marketing can invite a steady stream of inquiries into your business, and a referral system will ensure that your happy customers introduce like-minded people to you.

When working with clients to increase their profitability, we establish a plan to ensure their business is working at its peak in all areas. We help them measure their results, and track their performance towards goals. Combined with a solid business marketing plan, businesses see strong and lasting increases to their bottom line.

No matter how well your business did last year (and we hope it was a brilliant year for you), there are 3 fundamental things you need for continued business growth and mastery.

The new year is the perfect time to reassess where you are now, and where you want to be when Christmas rolls around again – and trust us, this will seem sooner rather than later!

Over the last 15 years we’ve helped business owners and teams achieve everything they want. We focus on the 3 things that are essential for continual business growth and mastery. We call these the three pillars of business success. Here’s more about them, and how to get them to support you and your business in 2018…

1 Mindset

If there’s one thing we’re sure of, it’s that successful people have positive mindsets. They look for solutions rather than problems, and focus on the end goal rather than obstacles. Knowing that challenges will continually appear, they face them directly and quickly to ensure they get back on track with minimal detour.

As Brian Tracy says in his talk The Secrets of Self-Made Millionaires(get it here on audible.com), problems in business are like waves on the ocean that come in sets, with one towering above the others: “Problem, problem, problem, problem, CRISIS!” Successful people understand that as they learn to deal with challenges they grow as business leaders.

Successful business leaders learn the skill of goal-setting. They challenge themselves constantly by pushing outside their comfort zones. Familiar with perturbation – that uncomfortable feeling of tension when you’re moving past your previous limits – they have learned to think big and dream bigger.

They acknowledge that they can’t do it all on their own. Their support team includes a proactive accountant, responsive business banker, trusted legal advisor, and qualified and experienced business coach to help them reach their goals.

2 Knowledge and Education

Successful business leaders know what they don’t know. They commit to continually improving their knowledge, and rely on experts to assist them to achieve business growth. Instead of stretching themselves too thin by trying to be the best at everything, they work with their skills and talents. They focus on their core strengths, while learning what it takes to achieve business growth and mastery.

Clear on the difference between being the technician and the business owner (as defined in Micheal Gerber’s classic business book The E-Myth Revisited), they are free enough from daily business operations to work on business growth. Rather than learning from their own mistakes, they use a business advisor or mentor to fast-track their success. They learn and grow from the mistakes and success of others.

3 Accountability

Taking responsibility and being accountable for your own business success is critical for business growth. When you accept that your past, current situation and future are all a result of your own actions, your can truly make improvements. Yes, the unexpected will happen. Challenges will occur (refer to point number one above). But with resilience, grit, and taking charge of your own destiny, you will hold the keys to everything you want.

Masters of business growth rely on a business coach to keep them accountable to their goals. Just like a sports coach, a business coach will push you to work harder than you would on your own, and ensure you’re operating in top form to reach your desired results.

The Next Steps For Your Business Growth

Have you achieved a certain level of business success but are ready for more?

Are you not only interested, but committed to business growth and mastery?

Are you are ready to take the action needed to get the results you want from your business?

Whether you’re a manager, business owner, or employee, one thing we’re sure of: You want 2018 to be a great year!

Your wish-list might include work-life balance, a profitable business, a happy and productive team, and achievement of your personal goals.

So how do you ensure you get what you want in 2018, and what happens is by design and not default?

This week with clients we are creating 2018 business plans. If you’d like to ensure your year is everything you want it to be, in both your business and personal life, read on and follow our 4 simple steps below …

1. Review 2017’s Highlights

Before making a 2018 business plan, it’s essential to see where you are now and how far you’ve come.

Start by thinking back to January this year. How different was life and business then? What have you accomplished in the last 12 months? How has your business grown and changed? What’s happened in your career? What personal goals did you achieve?

Write down your achievements in all areas of your life and work – business growth and mastery, career, learning, family, fun, health and wellbeing.

Take a moment to appreciate how your life has changed and what you’ve done to create that. Congratulate yourself on your achievements so far.

2. Picture Your Future In Review

Now imagine yourself this time next year, December 2018, doing the same exercise. If you were looking back on 2018, what would your achievements be?

Take at least 10 minutes to really think this through. List all you’ve gained in terms of business turnover and profit, the types of clients you’ve attracted, career moves, office relocation or upgrades, success you’ve helped your clients to achieve, fitness or family wins, what you’ve learned… any result you’d like to see by the end of the year.

3. Create Your 2018 Business Plan

Bring your mind back to the present day. The list you’ve just made is now your goal list for 2018. Make sure each goal passes the test of being measurable, realistic, and time-framed. Get specific. Instead of grow business you might write increase turnover by 30% and profit by 15% by 31 December 2018.

Put a date next to each goal. If you can’t be specific, narrow it down to be something you’ll accomplish by end of Q1, Q2, Q3 or Q4.

And make sure what you want to achieve is within your sphere of influence or control. There’s no point stating what you want someone else to do if you have no power over their actions! Instead of Get supervisors to perform to standard you could write Learn skills to more effectively manage supervisors and enforce their KPIs by 31 March. You can choose to be a better manager and hold them accountable, but their response and actions will ultimately be up to them.

4. Get A Coach To Help You And Your Team

As our clients know, setting goals and having a 2018 Business Plan is just the start. Finding someone to support you, guide you, and keep you accountable will ensure your success. A great business coach will work with the business owners, managers and team to ensure the business reaches its goals. A great business coach will also support you to achieve your personal and lifestyle goals.

If you’re a business manager or employee, suggest Yellow Coaching’s services to the decision makers in your business. We’ll arrange a complimentary meeting with them to discuss the needs of the business and team.

Business improvement helps owners, employees, their families, and the community. When shown what’s possible and given the right tools, strategies and support, businesses and the people in them can achieve their full potential.

Yellow’s coaches work with the owners, managers and teams of established businesses of any size within the private sector; and with executives, managers and team members at all levels within Government and not-for-profit organisations.

Whomever they are working with, their goal is to assist business leaders to maximise the potential of themselves, their team, and their business. Yellow’s coaches achieve this through business coaching, executive mentoring, leadership and management training, strategic planning, conference and workshop facilitation, keynote speaking, and team member coaching. They also provide team training on numerous topics including effective sales techniques, business marketing, outstanding customer service, time and priority management, improving team culture and morale, efficient systems and processes, resilience, and change management.

When leading and managing a team, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t cut it. Many people rise through the ranks of an organisation because of their natural ability to achieve results, but this doesn’t mean they know how to effectively lead and manage people.

Too often we see managers treating every team member the same way – in the way the manager likes to be treated. If the manager is results-driven, they expect each team member to be the same. If they communicate in a short and sharp style, they speak to every employee in orders and bullet points, and expect each team member to communicate the same way.

Managers need management skills in order to effectively manage a team:

They need self-awareness to understand their own communication style, and learn how to recognise the communication style of others.

They need to learn how to find out what motivates different individuals on their team, and how to tap into that to increase performance.

They need to learn how to encourage desired behaviour and address poor behaviour.

Managers need a toolbox of skills so they can get the best from each team member, so the organisation can achieve its goals. To use a building analogy, when the only tool a manager has is a hammer, he’ll treat everyone as if they’re a nail.

Not training your managers may save your organisation money in the short term, but it’s short-sighted. When left to their own devices, supervisors with poor people skills become managers without the trust and respect of their team, who then become leaders no-one wants to follow.

It’s the responsibility of every organisation to give their managers skills and tools to be effective.

Management training is essential for supervisors as they make their way through the ranks of the organisation. Here are three reasons that using a business or executive coach to train your managers makes perfect sense:

1 It saves money

Poor management is the number one reason staff leave an organisation. Ineffective management results in poor performance from the team, a lack of trust, and employees feeling like they are not valued. The result can be high staff turnover, which means constant recruitment, training and people issues which take time, money and energy, which affects a business’s bottom line. Unhappy staff give poor customer service, which results in loss of customers. Using an executive coach is an investment in your managers which will lead to greater business stability and profit.

2 It saves time

For mid-level managers to be effective and to grow, they need support. They often need advice on how to deal with particular team members, or need help as they face challenges they haven’t encountered before. Having support from an executive coach ensures they get an outsider’s perspective, unbiased advice, and can speak openly and honestly about their challenges. It also ensures that issues are addressed early, before they grow into major problems.

3 It frees upper management to get on with driving the business forward

If a mid-level manager needs to seek advice and support from further up the organisational ladder, it can slow the business down. Directors and General Managers need to focus on driving the business forward, not get distracted by inevitable ‘people issues’ that can easily be solved with outside assistance. Using an executive coach can ensure the leadership team can focus on leading the business towards its goals.

Yellow Coaching provides leadership and management training to supervisors, managers and exeucutives within large organisations. Our clients have included the Royal Australian Air Force, Office of State Revenue, National Australia Bank, KCE, and dozens of other businesses.

Call us on (02) 4933 6622 to find out how we can train your managers to perform to the best of their ability.

(one your competitors won’t tell you, and one everyone should be told!)

Do you sometimes feel that your competitors have a secret that’s allowing their business to do better than yours?

Do you look at other businesses and think they are smooth sailing, while yours is weathering rough seas?

If you’re like most business owners, at some stage you’ll be comparing yourself to your competitors and wondering what their secret is to getting ahead.

There are many secrets in today’s competitive world, and keeping your important information confidential is essential.

Details about your finances, marketing, and team concerns should be shared only with trusted professionals – such as your business coach, accountant and banker.

While privacy is important, this secrecy among business owners can lead to misconceptions. No-one wants their competition to know they have challenges, so you’ll usually hear business owners say “we’re flat out!” and keep up the facade that business is always great.

Without knowing what other businesses go through, you may think you are the only one struggling with team issues, tight cashflow, customer complaints, or a lack of leads.

You may fall for the psychological trap of ‘comparing and despairing’. Just like on social media, where it’s easy to contrast your own behind-the-scenes with others’ highlight reels, you can start to believe that everyone else’s business is doing better than yours.

As business coaches, we are in the privileged position of seeing the truth behind the outward image. We don’t work with broken businesses, but rather those that want to go from good to great. No matter how successful a business is, one thing is constant – challenges, frustrations, and worries are a part of every business.

Challenges are inevitable. To get ahead you need to tackle them early while they are still small, by growing your own ability to overcome them.

It’s not the business without challenges that comes out in front, but the business which overcomes its challenges the fastest.

So if business challenges are inevitable, how do you ensure that you deal with them effectively?

When faced with challenges in life and in business, you have three options.

Turn around and run as fast as you can in the other direction

It may sound comical, but this is a common response to challenges. Some think that if they flee in the other direction, they can outrun any problem. Ever known someone to change their situation but end up facing similar problems down the track? Even when you run, some problems follow you wherever you go. As you haven’t learned to deal with them, you’ll be in the same position next time they appear.

Stand still, ignore them, and hope they go away

Just like running away, this choice does nothing to defeat your challenges or grow your own ability to deal with them. In fact, ignoring your problems and hoping they go away often makes them grow larger. It’s almost as though they increase in size to demand your attention!

Face them and tackle them head on

This is always the choice made by the most successful business leaders we know. When you choose to confront your challenges, you are forced to grow to overcome them. When you do this, instead of your problems growing, YOU grow. Next time you face a similar situation you’ll overcome it easily, and be ready to jump the next hurdle that appears.

Let’s see how choosing to ignore or face your challenges can result in very different outcomes.

Hoping it goes away …

A business owner meets with us to discuss his challenges. He started his business nearly three years ago, and it has now grown to a team of 7. His staff turnover has been high, and customer satisfaction is low.

He tells us that his staff members are the problem. After initial training, they stop following procedures and start doing things their own way. Their inconsistent service results in customer complaints, and loss of profits due to inefficiencies and wastage. One or two employees started out okay – but they’ve lost their motivation and just don’t try anymore. His newest team member in particular, Tom, is dragging the rest of the team down.

He tells us that he doesn’t know how to deal with this problem, that he just wants them to shape up, and that he’s angry and frustrated. He is reacting rather than responding to situations, and is losing his cool often at home and at work.

His comments include:

My staff never do what I ask them to do

I have to tell them again and again how to do things and they still don’t get it right

I always have stay back at work to fix their mistakes

The team doesn’t like Tom, and I don’t want Tom to stay, but it’s easier than having to replace him. I don’t have time to train anyone else – it’s coming up to our busiest season

I earned more money and had fewer headaches when I was working on my own.

He complains that he can’t believe the bad luck he’s had with employees. “You just can’t get good staff these days”, he says.

We explain a few things to help him. As he’s not giving the team direction and guidelines for performance, they are setting their own bar. When poor performance is ignored, it’s condoned. He needs to give Tom feedback and an opportunity to improve, or standards throughout the team will slide. We suggest that he learns some new communication and management skills and ways of dealing with business challenges.

Unfortunately he decides that he is too busy to make changes right now. Besides, he tells us, it’s the staff that’s the problem, not him!

Three months later we heard from him that Tom’s performance had deteriorated even further, and other team members got more and more frustrated at having to pick up Tom’s slack. They started leaving one by one. As the business became under-staffed, standards slipped further, and the business lost more customers and profits. The owner had since recruited a new team member, but he wasn’t happy with that person’s performance either.

By ignoring the problems, the problems had grown, but the business owner’s ability to deal with challenges hadn’t. As he was finding out, ignoring problems and hoping they go away doesn’t work.

Tackling it head-on …

In our second scenario, let’s imagine the same business owner comes to see us to discuss his challenges. Just like before, he tells us that he doesn’t know how to manage his staff. They are not following procedures, are losing motivation, and it’s impacting business results. In particular his newest employee Tom needs a lot of direction.

His outlook this time is one of finding a solution, rather than focusing on the problem. He tells us he doesn’t want his frustration to impact his enjoyment of work, the service he can provide his customers, his business profits, or his home life.

His comments include:

I need to learn how to communicate more effectively with my team so they do what I ask

I want to learn how to hold my employees accountable

I want advice on how to improve their skills and behaviour

I want a strong team throughout our busiest season

I want to grow my business and team, so the team can work without me there every day.

The business owner has clear goals for his business, and doesn’t have time for distractions. He knows he needs to deal with this problem before it grows.

He decides to learn some new management skills, knowing that to get a different result he needs to change his own actions. As he puts into practice what he’s learned, team morale improves. The team creates a company culture or ‘rules of the game’. The standards rise, and he finds the team members holding each other accountable to perform to their best.

He gives Tom feedback, support, and extra training, but unfortunately Tom’s performance doesn’t change. After receiving a written warning, Tom chooses to resign. The other employees are relieved that they no longer have to take up Tom’s slack.

This business owner has a new problem – he now has to replace Tom as they enter their busiest season. But now he has skills and experience in dealing with underperforming employees, and can focus on a solution and move forward. The team help recruit a new employee in line with their new company culture.

Instead of the problem growing, the owner’s skills, ability, and confidence to deal with team issues has grown.

Three months later this business has employed another two team members, and is looking forward to a year of record growth.

As this business owner found out, business is a journey of constant and never-ending improvement, and problems are often the push we need to grow.

Challenges are inevitable in business and in life. To be successful, we need to focus on what we can control, which is the way we deal with them. Having a solutions-focused approach and choosing to grow – rather than allowing our problems to grow – is the secret.

Time is one thing we all have that’s not replaceable. We can’t slow it down, stop it, get it back or create more. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever.

Each life lasts a different amount of time, and none of us know exactly how much time we will get. Some people race to the finish line leaving a trail of accomplishments, and some find themselves at the end of their life never having discovered their purpose. Some say it goes too slow, while others feel it races by faster each year. Some people waste it, and some savour it.

So how much time do we actually have?

In every week there are:

168 hours10,080 minutes604,800 seconds

On average we each have around 4,000 weeks to live.

How you use your time is the main determinant of your success (whatever success means to you).

So if we all have the same number of seconds, minutes, and hours in each day, why do we spend them differently?

Why do some people end up with accomplishments and wealth beyond measure, and others find themselves chasing every dollar?

Why do some write 60 books in their career, and others pass away with an unfinished manuscript?

There are certainly many things in life we can’t control. While we can do our best to maintain our health and safety, accidents and illness happen.

But when it comes to what we have influence and control over, we spend our time according to our values.

If you value family above all else, a large part of your time may be devoted to family activities. You may choose to work fewer hours so you can spend more time with your children, or direct your finances into shared experiences rather than creating long-term wealth.

If you value health above all else, you may prioritise healthy home-cooked meals over dining out, and exercise over other activities.

If you value wealth, you may invest time in education, work, your business, and professional growth.

Simply put, we make time for what’s important to us. There is no right or wrong when it comes to values, just choices and consequences. There is nothing good or bad about prioritising wealth over family, or leisure over business. But each choice you make will get you a different result.

So what if you want a different result from what you’ve been getting? Perhaps your business isn’t performing as well as you want it to, or you are concerned you won’t have enough money in retirement. Perhaps your health is not allowing you to do the things you want.

With only so many hours in each day, you may need to forego one thing in order to spend time on another.

Want to increase your fitness? Do one hour of yoga at night instead of watching television. Want to increase your wealth? Attend investment seminars, and read books on wealth creation instead of novels. Want better family relationships? Dedicate one block of time each week to doing something fun together.

A large amount of time, effort and money is spent doing things we don’t want to do. Perhaps we think we ‘should’ do them, or that other people expect us to. Sometimes we might do things that we don’t truly value to impress others (and interestingly, sometimes we don’t even like the people we are trying to impress!)

It’s time we redefined what success means, in business and in life. Success is not about achievement in general, it’s about finding out what you truly care about and spending your most valuable resource – your time – on that.

When working with clients, one of the first and most important things we do is discover their values. Sometimes how they spend their time isn’t in alignment with what’s truly important to them. Sometimes what they think they value isn’t really that important to them after all. Either way, we make sure their time is spent on the right things – those things that will help them achieve what they really want out of life.

Business coaching is not just about tweaking a good business to make it great. It’s also about personal and professional development for the business owner and their team. We want your business to be the vehicle that helps you get all you want out of life.

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There …

Your current knowledge, goals, skills, experience and actions have created the business you have today. If you are dissatisfied with any aspect of your business, you need to change something to get a different result.

Albert Einstein is famously quoted as saying: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

Author Marshall Goldsmith wrote an invaluable book, the title of which says it perfectly: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.

Trial and error is one way to improve – and making mistakes certainly can be our best teacher (provided we actually learn from our mistakes, and don’t make the same ones time and time again!). But a far more effective and faster approach is to learn from the mistakes and success of others.

One option is to find a business leader who has achieved success in the area of business in which you want to excel, assess what it is that makes them so successful, and implement that yourself. We call this modelling – observing the way another person behaves to get a certain result, and reproducing those actions to achieve similar outcomes.

Another option is to find a professional business mentor, advisor or coach whose sole purpose is to help business leaders succeed. They have learned from the success and failure of others, and can pass on that knowledge so you can fast-track your business success. Here are five reasons engaging a professional in this field will be valuable to you:

1. Knowledge and Education

Business coaches, advisors and educators package up the knowledge of countless authors, speakers, academics and business leaders to help their clients achieve greater success. Through their research, training and experience they teach proven methodologies that have worked successfully for other business leaders. They also know the pitfalls and can steer you clear of obstacles.

2. Direction

Every business leader needs clear direction. A good business mentor will help you establish, reconnect with, or expand yours, and keep you on track. You could think of them as your GPS! When you wander off track, they will steer you back to where you need to be.

3. An Outsider’s Perspective

When you’re busy working day to day inside your business, it’s hard to take a broader, objective view. Your advisor can help you see the bigger picture and give you an outsider’s perspective. They can provide this viewpoint with honesty – not telling you what you want to hear, but what you need to hear to get better results.

4. Accountability

Knowledge without application is worthless, and part of your mentor’s role can be to push you to get things done, in the right way and at the right time, and for the right objectives. They’ll also remind you why you set your goals in the first place, and the benefits of getting the work done.

5. Encouragement

There’s no doubt that business can be tough, which is also why it’s so rewarding. When things are challenging, your coach can reconnect you with your ‘why’ and remind you of your greater vision and purpose (while giving you the tools to continue on when things get tough).

While there’s no short cut to success, partnering with a business mentor, coach or consultant can help you achieve better business results more quickly and effectively.

We grow established businesses by coaching business leaders and their teams to success in areas including marketing, sales, customer service, team, systems, profit, and cashflow.